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Nice Guy Eddie

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Nice Guy Eddie

  1. ‘79 series between the pirates and orioles stands out in mind as when I started to appreciate baseball.
  2. It's Houston 2-3pm. Hearing the thunderstorms rolling in. Time to get to wherever you need to be for the next few hours.
  3. I'm always so annoyed that when the state GOP officials want to provide tax relief, they only focus on property tax. Which further strangles local govt and schools, forcing them to be more dependent on the growing state of Texas govt. And Texas does it best to refuse federal funds. If Abbott or Patrick want to lower taxes, they should only have the right to change the state sales tax. If they want to lower tax revenue, they should start with state tax revenue first. I don't even see why or how they should have control of local taxes. Believe the sales tax rate has been 6.25% (state level) since 1990. If it was those nasty Dems that took it up to 6.25%, why hasn't the GOP brought it down. Funny how there's never a peep out of them to touch their funds.
  4. Since wealth inequality is showing zero signs of decreasing, we are going to turn to more and more policies like rent stabilizations. Poor people will continue to make up more and more of the voting public. Wealthy people should recognize that they will eventually have one of two outcomes: either the govt will take some of your wealth via taxation, or the mob will take all of your wealth, maybe your life, when they show up on your doorstep with guns. Of course there is a growing movement to only allow voting by those with a positive income tax payment. Surprisingly even some poor MAGA are supportive of losing their personal right to vote away. So odd.
  5. Weekday afternoon games are the best. I get that some fans can't make them, but it also opens up games to fans that nights are tough, especially with school aged kids in the summer. They're also bad ass in taking off work with friends and enjoying a beer at 1pm on a Wed. Finally I like the idea of giving the ball players a slight break in the flight schedule so every flight isn't red eye flight.
  6. I'm more and more impressed with AI every week. However, it's still be unable to perform some data analytic tasks that I've thrown at it. Perhaps I'm using the wrong models, or need to enhance the prompts. For example, I struggle to get AI to recognize that one data set has Eddie Smith and another is Eddie M. Smith, and to consider them the same. And that the first name field may have the middle initial in it as well. (Note in my limited data, I don't have currently have anyone with duplicate first and last names.) I also find that data hallucinations are less likely now. I've run through some training that demonstrates that you can apply steps to validate an answer perhaps even using a different model to validate. If Gemini tells you that Napoleon ruled New Zealand, you can ask OpenAI to validate the answer. If found to false or questionable, either model can be re-asked the question and validated again. The downside of answer validation is time/cost.
  7. I've never believed in the wisdom of rent control. I get it that it helps renters but it also creates an artificial marketplace that harms others as well. People can't afford a new place because a landlord needs higher rents to cover the fact that another tenant has been paying $200/mo for the last 40 years. Of course, my understanding is that new NYC rent control apartments stopped in the 70s, and those tenants at the time were grandfathered in. Very few of them remain. Their stories are crazy so they often get repeated and believed to be widespread. Rent stabilization is the current system that makes more sense. However it still creates an artificial marketplace that eventually gets out of line when its controlled by politicians who answer to said tenants. Who wants to vote for a politicians who indirectly raised your rent. Stabilization can also lead to subpar living conditions as the apt owner has less incentive to improve the building. Since they have limited availability to sign new tenants, they will do the bare minimum required perhaps even waiting to be forced to do so by the authorities.
  8. Yesterday I stumbled onto the new Peter Thiel interview on the NY Times. watch/listen Not that I didn't think this before, but he's even weirder than I thought. He has this core belief that the world became stagnant after Los Alamos '45 or perhaps the Moon landing in '69. Even to a point that the internet and now AI wasn't as big of a deal. He's also comes across as very fixated that we haven't discovered more (any?) cures or treatment for dementia. Either he had just finished reading an article about that so it was top of mind, or I have to wonder if he has a personal fear that is his near-term future. I will psychoanalyze him further in that some in his position of wealth, power and arrogance can get very upset when they recognize their mortality. I'm ~2 years younger than Thiel, and it's a sobering fact in your mid-50s that your highly productive years are behind you and/or quickly ending. You have to accept that the world now belongs to younger people. Life isn't over but you won't be around to experience 50 years from now. I hadn't realized that he hasn't made any political donations since the '22 cycle due to disillusionment of MAGA.
  9. Usually not worth using cards on transactions that effectively force you to cover the vendors credit card fees. Sign up bonuses strategies excluded, in my experience these types of transactions usually reward you 1-2% max. I have a BoA card that I can get 1.75% on random categories but that doesn’t cover the credit card fee on my prop tax bill. Spending 2.2% to earn 1.75% is bad math. credit card companies got wise to some of the creative strategies used 20+ years ago. I remember when they allowed cash advances with a capped fee and an extended 0% interest. In the early 2000s, I withdrew $40k for something like a $500 fee. No interest for ~2 years. I stuck it in a 18 month CD earning about 4%. I just had to muscle up the monthly payments. The good old days of using my credit score to earn passive income.
  10. The Trump administration is holding up the paramount sale until they settle with Trump. Perfectly normal behavior.
  11. Trump now has personal control over many business decisions by US Steel as part of the agreement to let Nippon Steel purchase them. Perfectly normal for a president to take over a private company. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/26/trump-golden-share-us-steel-nippon-merger.html The new business charter does state that power is retained by the federal govt after Trump leave office but presumably there’s nothing stopping Trump from transferring that power to himself or his family. Or he can decide to reward himself whatever distribution he wants. It reminds me when Obama gave himself power over many businesses in his 8 years. Oh wait, that never happened.
  12. Since most of these “agents” are corrections officers, they’re following their training. If you’re extracting a disruptive prisoner from a cell, you overwhelm them with force.
  13. I’ve read that most of these new ICE workers are current corrections officers who have been deputized. ICE likes to present them as long time ICE agents, police, ATF, etc. but in reality most of those individuals would want nothing to do with this work. Instead they recruiting men who work in jails and prison and annually earn less than $50K. they have no real training in law enforcement and frankly couldn’t get a job in law enforcement so they’re basically mercenary bounty hunters at this point.
  14. Side comment. In these situations I’ve always wondered if the city employee/cop/judge finds an envelope of cash on their desk then identifies a calibration problem. but they lecture the soon-to-be exonerated defendant that there better not be a next time.
  15. Makes sense but I don’t see a problem with some funds in high(er) yield dividend funds. I don’t mean chasing 10% yields but a solid ~4% on some of your bankroll isn’t bad. IMO. i have about 10% of my investable assets in dividend stocks/funds. Not only do I like to reinvest the dividends, I find that when the dividend increases annually, the price somewhat rises by the same percent in a trend towards the previous yield. Dividends increase by 4%, you get that 4% price increase as well. I generally avoid dividends that don’t increase annually. finally dividend investing has a game like feel. Say I want the avg monthly dividend to go up $5, I transfer over $1500 to buy a 4% yield. Perhaps I would spend that otherwise. $5 doesn’t buy you anything but repeat that buy regularly over a few years and it’s a decent amount. And you can still sell the funds if you want.
  16. Sorry if I'm slow with my thoughts, but I'm going to assume that a law allowing wastewater to be reused is not really about finding a reuse of the water or frankly even disposing of it. If O&G can "safely" reuse wastewater for agriculture, then why not allow them more access to more groundwater. They'll return x% of it back to the river or agriculture canals at a later date. Let's face it, O&G wants 100% of Texas water so they need to identify how to sell that argument. In a way, it reminds me how the chemical industry came up with the idea of plastic recycling. Not because they wanted to reduce landfill waste or that they wanted to buy recycled plastic. They wanted to shift the blame of plastic waste in our environment away from them. Chemical companies aren't the bad guy, it's your neighbor who refuses to separate their trash. This gives the chemical companies more of a market because the consumer doesn't feel bad about choosing plastic.
  17. To me, one of the problems of quitting is that there's a good chance that many in your life are drinkers and they're the ones who have a problem with your quitting. And not that they're bad people that want you to be an alcoholic or heavy drinker but rather that they want a drinking friend at times. Anyone can say those aren't your friends but that's not necessarily true.
  18. I recall being taught something similar but in reality Union troops weren't in Galveston or Texas in 1862 when the Proclamation was enacted. I don't believe for a second that Texas leaders weren't aware of it in 1862. I imagine they did their best to not have local papers write about it, and didn't speak about it too loudly. Then again maybe they used it as a rallying cry to create support by scaring the whites.
  19. where do you keep the ice? In the urinal?
  20. I don't know how to interpret "never been closer" to a nuclear weapon but if we truly thought they were close, we should strike them today. why give them time to complete it, or worse use it.
  21. Of course Texas Republicans are slow to embrace Juneteenth. It’s hard to celebrate the end of slavery when you’re still nostalgic for the good ol’ days of states' rights and dress-up secessionist cosplay.
  22. I also bet that the Texas Lege will eventually pass a law to prevent any restaurant/grocery store in providing information whether any food product is tied to fracking wastewater. This could be Dan Goeb's senate bill 1 in the next go-round.
  23. https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/18/politics/social-security-trust-fund-annual-report Let me add 65 to my birth year to see when I might decide to collect SS. That gives me.... 2034.
  24. Slim Charles knows more about war than most secretaries of state.
  25. Modi isn't even wearing a suit to the oval office so clearly he's lying and should be kicked out. Probably failed to thank President Trump for forcing the UK to accept Indian independence. Edit: independence under Trump's regime.
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